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The Jewish Theatre in San Francisco is closing at the end of its current season. In its 34 years, the company has produced original plays and reproductions ranging from works inspired by Yiddish poetry and Biblical traditions, to plays about the experiences of German Jews between the world wars, and the conflict in the Middle East.

KALW’s Molly Samuel went to see the play that opens The Jewish Theatre’s final act. It’s a Depression–era story that resonates with the economic reality the theater and many other arts organizations are facing today.

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MOLLY SAMUEL: The play, called, “In the Maze of Our Own Lives,” begins with the entire cast on stage, singing, while black and white photographs from the Great Depression are projected on a wall behind them.

The year is 1931. Americans are out of work and hungry. But the characters in the play have other concerns.

MICHAEL NAVARRA (as Harold Clurman in “In the Maze of Our Own Lives”): The problem is that Americans don’t really talk to one another. Oh, they make wisecracks at each other…

Harold Clurman, played by actor Michael Navarra, is a theater critic. He’s lecturing a group of actors, playwrights, and directors.

NAVARRA (as Harold Clurman in “In the Maze of Our Own Lives”): …They don’t really live together. That’s why there’s no such thing as an American theater!

This play is based on real events and real people. Clurman was one of the founders of The Group Theatre in New York in the 1930s. The play covers its inception to its eventual breakup on the eve of World War II.

The Group Theatre aimed to do something unique in its time: cover the realities that Americans were facing. In one scene, Group Theatre member and playwright Clifford Odets, who’s played by actor Joshua Roberts, tells Clurman about his first play, called “Awake and Sing.”

And it had nothing to do with the lives of the actual actors or writers. Fischer says he got interested in The Group Theatre after he read a profile of Clifford Odets.

FISCHER: And I became gripped by the parallels with our story in the Jewish Theatre of San Francisco, my own experience as a theater artist, and as a Jew and an American. And I began to realize here was a story that wasn’t that well-known, but that needed to be told, especially in this time.

The Group Theatre wasn’t a Jewish theater, though many members were Jewish. It was made up of regular people … middle and working class; some immigrants. They portrayed the struggle to make ends meet and to find a place in American culture. Fischer got the title of his play from a quote by Harold Clurman.

FISCHER: And we use it in the piece. It’s where he says, “We’re coming together,” he’s speaking to the other actors, early on in the life of the Group Theatre, and he says:

NAVARRA (as Harold Clurman in “In the Maze of Our Own Lives”): “We’re coming together in trust with a shared passion to express meaning. And we are going to find that meaning not only in the playwrights’ words, but in the maze of our lives, and the lives of everyone around us.”

In that era, that included people standing in bread lines, and organizing strikes.

GALEN MURPHY-HOFFMAN (as Elia Kazan in “In the Maze of Our Own Lives”): “What’s the answer boys? The answer is, if we’re Reds because we want to strike, we take over their salute.”

Since “In the Maze of Our Own Lives” is about a theater, it includes scenes from plays the company performed. This scene, from Odets’ play “Waiting for Lefty,” revolves around a group of taxi drivers, trying to decide if they should strike.

MURPHY-HOFFMAN (as Elia Kazan in “In the Maze of Our Own Lives”): Working class unite and fight. Tear down the slaughterhouse of our old lives. Let freedom really ring.”

Coincidentally, Fischer’s play opened just as the Occupy movement was spreading across the country.

ROBERT AVILA: It makes the play all the more resonant.

Robert Avila is the senior theater critic for the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

AVILA: It’s the right time to be thinking about something like the Group Theatre, what it came out of, what it responded to, and as a result how it influenced the culture.

The Group Theatre managed to form during the Great Depression, but the Jewish Theatre isn’t going to survive the recent recession.

FISCHER: The financial reality hit us very hard and we had to wake up and realize that there was no way we could continue really in any meaningful way.

So, after this season, the Jewish Theatre is closing its doors. In the last scene of Fischer’s play the Group Theatre disbands.

FISCHER: Harold Clurman says something to the effect of, “If the Group Theatre ceases to exist, it’s not a tragedy. But if all work of this kind ceases, that is a fatal wound for this country.”

NAVARRA (as Harold Clurman in “In the Maze of Our Own Lives”): “If it’s finally through with us it might actually be a relief. But if no one insists on paying attention to farmers and pipefitters, to janitors and young mothers being worked to death. If the passion to tell every forgotten story dies out, then it’s a gaping goddamn wound. A fatal wound in the American soul.”

FISCHER: And I wholeheartedly agree.

After spending 34 years with the Jewish Theatre, Fischer says now he’s going to spend more time with his family, but he’ll keep working on this play.

FISCHER: Because plays, like any part of theater, as opposed to some other art forms, the work’s never over…

So, Fischer’s work will continue, and the Group Theatre, even though it closed before World War II, its influence has lasted. Some of its founders went on to train actors including Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson, and Mark Ruffalo. And the Group Theatre’s emphasis on telling stories that reflect the lives of its actors and its audience has become a hallmark of American theater.

For Crosscurrents, I’m Molly Samuel.

“In The Maze of Our Own Lives” is playing at the Jewish Theatre in San Francisco through Sunday, November 12.